Glocal Christianity

An (ana)Baptist explores Deep Church and wonders

Over the weekend I've been devouring Jim Belcher's new book "Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional", which I won't be reviewing today, but will be reviewing shortly. Instead, today is for processing, for reexamining my own engagement with the emerging church conversation. The question: how would I describe my own ministry?

You see, in many ways my entire journey has been beyond emerging and traditional, whilst being immersed in both. Of the three streams Belcher refers to - relevants, reconstructionists, revisionists - I clearly swim with the "reconstructionists". Yes, I tend to be influenced by Anabaptist "resident aliens" perspectives, and yes, I am actively exploring postConstantinian (note,  contra Belcher I would not say preConstantinian) church models. But I am doing so from within a semi-traditional, sem-contemporary church, so what does that mean? How do my 'reconstructionist' tendancies manifest in my traditional church activity?

Well, since moving into the role of Ministry Leader for Mission and Evangelism late last year I think it's been most obvious in my insistance that all ministries need to become more missional, that my calling is to equip the church for mission, to lead the church into mission, not to do all the mission. It's been in my efforts to help our "Kid's ministry" events to become more missional in preference to running separate "Evangelism ministry" events (which is a way of saying mission and cultural engagement is unavoidable, not a "special" thing for some). It's been in my pushing for ministry meetings to be opened up so different ministies can work together (which is a way of saying worship and witnessing should be explored in more holistic, less fragmented ways). Unlike the "relevants" I seek more than stylistic change, I seek structural change, and I am actively working for it.

But I am not seeking structural change through the founding of house church networks or new monastic communities as some within the reconstructionist stream strongly advocate. Not only is this not so practical for me, not being a recognised minister and all, but I am not so sure church planting is the only way forward anyway. Many reconstructionist leaders have spoken as if all we should do is plant new missional churches and wait for the old unmissional ones to die. Given church planting receives little support in established suburbs, yet established suburbs still need missional churches, I ask, why not consider church transformation as a valid option for some of us? After all, this insistance on planting good, transition bad, could that not be a subtle manifestation of the consumerism reconstructionists might otherwise protest against?

So in summary, I think there's a place for opening up traditionals to "resident alien" perspectives, for exploring third ways. Or is it a third way? No, I'm getting ahead of myself, I'll leave that for the review.

Blackstump, McLaren and the Sines

Ok, so I am finally sitting down to write about Blackstump 2009, or at least my experience of it. For those of you who don’t live in Australia, Blackstump is the down under equivalent of Greenbelt, a four day festival of Christian music, art and teaching.

I wasn’t there for four days though, just last Saturday, but what a packed Saturday it was. In the morning it was a Bible study with Brian McLaren. McLaren spoke on the barriers that divide us and had some interesting insights into the gospel of Matthew that I hadn’t picked up on before. He explored the confronting encounter between Jesus and the Syro-Phoenician woman, but then linked this to the second feeding incident and Deuteronomy 7. His synopsis? If we resist the temptation to water down the text, we can see how, in overcoming his own barriers, Jesus models this for us. My synopsis? I give a thumbs up to anyone who can surprise me and get me wrestling with scripture in new ways.

After this I caught up with friends, Lucy and Andrew (HT for photo), who had organized a small, informal gathering over at the Genesis Lounge for people interested in missional arts and dancing. Good conversation.

After this, I caught some electives, the most inspiring of which was a talk by Andy Flannagan on Just Worship. Andy affirmed poets and artists as worship leaders, encouraged us to explore all of God’s character in worship, and inspired me to delve deeper into how I can lead others into poetic worship through my own.

Then some dinner with Simeon and Rosemary, friends from my Mind Body Spirit Festival days, and down to Mars Hill Café, where I joined a conversation with Tom and Christine Sine, Dean Tregenza, Ben Weatley, and a few others. Four or five hours later … after the lights were turned out on us … I turned into a pumpkin.

In the process though, I accepted an invite from Dean to be on the Sacred Space team next year. Keep posted.

Keep posted also because one of the things I haven’t mentioned previously, but may as well now, is that Tom and Christine Sine will be joining us for dinner in Pendle Hill towards the end of October before returning to America. One of the things I appreciate about Tom and Christine is that they seem to have more appreciation than most for the diversity in the emerging / missional conversation. I’ll be keen to see how their experiences here shapes that.

Brian McLaren in Sydney this October

I can't keep up with it all this week. I started the evening with swapping some messages with Tom and Christine Sine about their visit to Sydney in October. Then I got to Nic Paton's message about his new Sout project with Brian McLaren. Then I get a message from Lucy about a creative missional gathering she is organizing for October. Then I find out Brian McLaren is actually going to be in Sydney in October as well. Alright already! Enough with the October dates.

Anybody would think I had a free October - not!

Anywayz, if any of you would like to catch Brian in Sydney, you'll find him at the The Independent Theatre in North Sydney on the 10th. Register here. Other speakers will be Tim Costello on Transformation and Fuzz and Carolyn Kitto on the Australian Missional Movements.

Postscript: Ha, now I see Dave Tomlinson is in Melbourne tomorrow.

Why is the missional church NOT producing much literature for new Christians?

This is a huge question for me. As an observer of new religious movements I am very conscious of how much of NRM literature is aimed at newbies. When it comes to Emergent and Missional books though, by and large they are aimed at either (a) missional leaders or (b) post-evangelical Christians looking for new kinds of Christianity. There is so little out there for new Christians that from time to time I contemplate writing something myself out of shere frustration. The body language is very disturbing if one chooses to look.

Emergent Google Map

Just come across this neat-o new resource via Emergent Women: an open source Google Map of the Emergent world. 

I wasn't sure whether this was restricted to Emergent Village people or open to all things emerging, but I chose to presume the latter and put a little man for me too, hovering over Sydney, Australia. It is very interesting to spy some familiar names and actually be able to visualise where they are in the world.

The Emergent Fizzle: Disappointment Goes Viral

Just been reading some of the Emergent chatter about “The Great Disappointment” on The Hopeful Skeptic, One Hand Clapping, Jonny Baker and elsewhere. I wonder if there’s a book in it? No, that's probably being a bit too cynical. Look, this is the nature of tsunamis, they loose their energy as they spread out ... but ... they leave the world different. As Jonny said, the real work has only just begun.

Four Models of Emerging Churches

Been reading up on yet another scheme for classifying emerging churches thanks to Shawn of Lofi Tribe, this time the Four Models of Emerging Churches according to Wess Daniel. He explains it like this:

Deconstructionist Model: Probably the most well known group of emerging churches these churches are truly postmodern in just about every sense of the word. These are Christians influenced mainly by deconstruction, a philosophical approach invented on the continent. In their holy readings of philosophical discourse Derrida, Lyotard, Foucault and Caputo would be there. Much of the focus is on adopting postmodernity, and contextualizing the Gospel accordingly. Peter Rollins’ Ikon in Ireland would be a good example of one such group. I think Tony Jones and Brian McLaren would also fall under this category. I would say they are accommodating to postmodern culture, against modernism, and often against the institutional church making them lean towards a sort of non-denominationalism.

Pre-modern/Augustinian Model: This model would be the second most influential within the EC, and can be in (friendly) opposition to the first group. Instead of understanding postmodernism in terms of Nietzschean philosophy as group one would do, this model leans more towards a Renaissance styled post-modernism (similar to what is represented in Toulmin’s Cosmopolis). Whether this group is truly early modern or whether it reaches back further to the pre-modern era I am not quite clear on, but St. Augustine and St. Thomas are key figures for this group. This is the where the Radical Orthodoxy of John Milbank, James K. Smith and others would fall. We see some catholics here, as well as other theologians that tend towards placing a higher emphasis on tradition within the overall framework of the Christian faith, rather than simply contextualization. This group would be see history as having shown us a better way, and if we reach back far enough we may be able to find wisdom that will help us in our quest of faith today. They would be more favorable towards institutional church, and have a pretty clear understanding of what kind of church we ought to become, but would also be seen as nostalgic and trying to uphold an institution that has often oppressed and violated those we are called to help.

Emerging Peace Church Model (Or Open Anabaptism): This model of the emerging church stresses the non-conformist tendencies of Jesus, and thus the church should follow in his footsteps through non-violence, love of enemy and caring for the poor. This one may be closest to a kind of new monasticism that has so often been written about in recent times. While there are people from the various peace churches involved in this type of church, there are also people from a variety of traditions who are seeking to contextualize the Gospel within our culture. This group does not accept any one style of culture as being good, thus their non-conformist attitude is directed at modernity and postmodernity alike. They see Jesus (and his incarnation) as their primary model for engaging culture. They are influenced by Wittgenstein, Barth, Bonhoeffer, John H. Yoder, McClendon and Nancey Murphy to name a few. In this group you will find people like Jarrod McKenna and the Peace Tree, Shane Claiborne, some Mennonites, Rob Bell’s Mars Hill, Submergent, Jesus Radical and convergent Friends, to name a few. This group is counter any kind of Christendom styled church and thus would be sometimes for and sometimes against institutionalization, and would see contextualization as important only up to the point that it remains ultimately an extension of Jesus’ ministry and message.

Foundationalist Model: This model of the emerging church is more conservative in their reading of Scripture and modern approaches to ecclesiology (standard preacher-centered teaching, music for worship, etc) while seeking to be innovative in their approaches to evangelism. This may come in the form of people meeting in pubs, having tatoos, cussing from the pulpit, playing loud rock music for worship and adding a layer of “alternative-ness” to their overall church service. These churches can be found within larger church communities, or can be on their own, sometimes as a large (possibly mega) church. They follow standard Evangelicalism in that they aren’t attach to traditions, and come out politically and theologically conservative, while maintaining a more accomodational stance toward culture in the name of evangelism, they will ultimately look similar to older church communities theologically. This is where I think theologians like Millard J. Erickson or D.A. Carson have a lot of influence. And where practitioners such as Mark Driscoll, Dan Kimball, Erwin McManus and many “emerging services” within mega-church congregations like Willow Creek might be found.

Now, where oh where do you think Glocal Christianity would sit according to Wess Daniel? And what do you think are the strengths and weaknesses of this explaination of his?

We've been outed

In an article entitled, "It may be emerging, but is it church?" Kevin Ward observes:

"It is thus no coincidence that many of the initiators of the emerging church movement in NZ and Australia have been Baptist. Such a simple definition [of church] leaves them much freer to experiment with a diversity of forms."

LOL. Baptist? Guilty as charged. LOL. Never heard it put so bluntly before. Mind you, the Uniting Church has also been over-represented in Australian emerging circles. Can't forget them. I think there is a bit more to it than our comparitively localized and consensus orientated ecclesiology. Nevertheless he got my attention.

HT John Drane

Emerging Church Panel Discussion

Just been watching an Emerging Church Panel Discussion I came across via TSK. Brings out a number of important issues, not lease beng the tendancy of supporters and critics to talk past one another. If I am hearing this correctly, a critical problem for the movement is the fact that its grass root diversity is not accurately represented in publishing industry sales. As a consequence, critics seem to be letting pastoral concerns about prominant authors get in the way of scholarly accuracy about the movement.

Emerging Mini Movements

I was just reading Mark Sayers latest reflection on the emerging missional church: The Emerging Missional Church Fractures into Mini Movements.

Mark classifies the emerging mini movements as follows:

Neo-Anabaptists: "Some have called this movement the new monastics ... This movement tends to be pacifist, favours incarnational living amongst the urban poor, and has a strong distrust of power, sees contemporary Western Culture and Society as being controlled by “Empire” and thus favours an approach of prophetic action by small grassroots Christian communities." Eg. Shane Claibourne

Neo-Calvinists: "This group views reformed theology as way out of the morally relevatist mess created by postmodernity. Whereas traditional Reformed theology viewed gifts of the spirit with suspicion, the new calvinism tends to have a charismatic edge." Eg. Mark Driscoll, Tim Keller.

Neo-Missiologists: "This group is also highly influenced by the missiology of Leslie Newbiggin and Paul Hiebert and favours an incarnational mode of church, that is not ‘attractional’ but rather missional. This group also borrows some of its eccleisiology from House Church theorists ..." Eg. Frank Viola, Alan Hirsch

Neo-Clapham’s: "...the Neo-Clapham’s take an approach that is global, large scale and campaign driven ... Much of the energy of the Neo-Clapham’s can be found in various movements such as Make Poverty History, Fair Trade, Human Trafficking, Blood Chocolate, and so on." Eg. Jim Wallis, Tim Costello, Bono

Digital Pentecostals: "This movement is a recent development within Pentecostalism in the West, specifically developing out of Australia. While Pentecostalism classically was defined by outward expressions of response to the Holy Spirit, the digital pentecostals create experiential spaces through cutting edge media and technologies in which participants can respond to the Holy Spirit ... In many ways this the second generation of Gen Y kids who have come of age being influenced by Hillsong." Eg. Joel Houston

Neo-Liberals: "Whereas traditional liberalism was born out of an attempt to create a theology that fit with modern sensibilities, the Ne-liberals find themselves creating a new theology in response to the post-modern context. Interestingly this group seems to be finding more and more in common with mainline liberal Churches in the United States than they do with Evangelicals." Eg. Emergent

Blenders:   This group would have placed themselves in the emerging church camp five years ago, but in response to the move away from evangelical theology by many of their former travellers (the Neo-Liberals) they have re-affirmed their commitment to evangelical theology. This group also seems to be questioning some of the assumptions of the Neo-Missiologists..." Eg. Erwin McManus, Dan Kimball.

This is probably a more Oz-centric reading of the situation than some of you would be used to, but being an Aussie myself that doesn't bother me so much :-)

A few reflections of my own

I agree with his overall thesis, the fracturing should be obvious to everyone by now, but I am not sure these mini movements are yet as cohesive as Mark suggests. For example, any of you who read this blog with any regularity would be aware of my strong Neo-Anabaptist leanings. But, if you have read that much, you would probably also be aware that I place a high value on cultural diversity and have some difficulty identifying with the Neo-Monostic path given its strong Celtic-centric tendancies. So I don't see the 1:1 correspondance between Neo-Monastic and Neo-Anabaptist that Mark does. I am just as concerned with injustice, but I tend to focus on racial-cultural injustice over socio-economic injustice. In other attempts at movement categorization that multicultural focus has landed me closer to Erwin McManus of Mosaic.

But other attempts at categorisation have seen me pidgeon holed in with Alan Hirsch and other Neo-Missiologists. There is truth there too. I am a huge Heibert fan and strongly identify with many missional thinkers and bloggers. But again, my advocacy of multicultural church over tribal church puts me somewhat at odds with that camp. Given the sizable gathering we recently had in Sydney for people who were, similar to myself, interested in multicultural mission over tribal mission I wonder if we have an emerging stream here that Mark has missed. Furthermore, if any of you have been reading Alan Hirsch's blog in the last week you'd be aware that Neo-Anabapstist and Neo-Missiologists paths are far from being mutually exclusive.

I also have qualms about locating Hillsong here. Though its true that they're missional and incarnational in their own way, it is very much in their own way and they're never really participated in this broader emerging missional conversation. Can they then be said to be part of the fracturing if they never danced with the rest to begin with? It's good to acknowledge what they're doing is different, but I think the situation would need to be defined more broadly to give justice to what's going on.

Coming then to the so-called Neo-Claphams, I see this as a phenomena that many have participated in to greater and lesser extent. Can it be said to be a coherant stream? I am somewhat skeptical. Particularly when so much of this is mainline too.

Part of the problem with Mark's classification here, I think, is that he identifies some streams by their theology and others by their methodology. That invites overlaps which threaten to undermine it's usefulness. This brings me to the so-called Blenders. Mark differentiates them as evangelicals having already teased out Neo-Calvinists and Neo-Anabaptists and Neo-Penticostals as distinct categories. What forms of evangelicalism are left? Is there any evidence that the Neo-Missionals are any less committed to the Lausanne Covenant than these blenders? I don't see it. This seems more of an "I don't know what to call them yet category."

I think what needs to be acknowledged here is that while the emerging missional church has fractured, these mini-movements are far from being mutually exclusive. Some of what differentiates is theological (anabaptist v calvinist v pentecostal), some is methadological (attractional v missional, megachurch v microchurch v parachurch) some is historical (reacting to emergent v indifferent to emergent v never had anything to do with emergent). I am not sure if any of the groups were are seeing emerge can be defined this easily.

Global Interaction on Local Mission

I participated in a very interesting forum on Friday evening. Global Interaction, an organisation that you’d normally associate with overseas mission, hosted an evening on multicultural mission in Australia. Interested, I went along for a look see.

Well, I am glad I did. I think I have just found Sydney’s mosaics.

The forum was held at Bankstown Sports Club. Many of the participants, like myself, seemed to come from multicultural areas in Sydney’s south and west and many that I talked to seemed familiar with the Emerging-Missional conversation, including the writings of Hirsch and Frost. But like myself, they had some qualms and were keen to explore what it means to be missional in much more explicitly multi-religious and multi-cultural settings than what normally gets talked about.

At one point in the evening I raised the issue that I have raised here on a number of occasions, that I think the homogenous unit principle of cross cultural mission collapses in the face of utter pluralism (though I phrased it more in terms of how do you do incarnational mission when you’ve got more cultures than Christians). That seemed to stump a few of the mishos, which is unsurprising because it stumps me sometimes too, but simply the fact that they took the question very seriously was encouraging. The best response coming from the floor was the suggestion that maybe we have to start off incarnational but shift to multicultural church in the discipleship process. This was not dissimilar to Steve Hayes’ comments here at Glocal Christianity some weeks back. All I would add to that is the need for networking and pooling expertise, which this evening was a good first step towards. I hope there are more of these evenings in the future.

Thanks to the Global Interaction team for taking the initiative.

Emergent Franciscan?

Is it just me or does it seem like some of the Emergent folk are a wee bit confused on the difference between Catholic and Anglican? Take this comment for instance:

The kind of Reformation Rohr is talking about here seems to me distinctively Franciscan (Rohr is a Franciscan himself, of course) as well as Emergent, and very close to the heart of the Franciscan way within the Anglican Communion.

Having participated in both Catholic and Anglican churches and never seen anything like this I am just left scratiching my head. Or is the line between Catholic and Anglican truly that blurry in other parts of the world?

More Missional, Emerging and Alt Worship Resources

eZines

Emerging Church Info
Self explanatory I suppose

Geez
An alter call from the fringes of faith

Ginkworld
Proof evolution is in flux

Next-Wave Ezine
Church & culture

Reality Magazine
New Zealand eZine

Ship of Fools
The Magazine of Christian Unrest

Spirited Exchanges
For people grappling with issues related to faith and church

The Door
Not right for anyone

The Holy Observer
God's #1 source for Christian news

The Ooze
Conversation for the journey

Alternative Worship

Graceway NZ
Earth-Wind-Fire-Water

Labyrinth
An online worship experience

Letter to Worship Songwriters
Article by Brian McLaren

Re: Jesus
Online spirituality portal

Small Fire
An alt. worship photo archive

The Wheel and the Tree
Exploring the Wiccan Myth

Podcasts

Catholic Insider

Cedar Ridge Community Church

Conversatio Fide

Missional Churches

Emerging Churches - Australia

Cafe Church
Sydney, Australia

Forge Mission Training Network
Equipping Australians for mission

Mars Hill Cafe
Sydney, Australia

Small Boat Big Sea
Sydney, Australia

Urban Seed
Melbourne, Australia

Village
Sydney, Australia

Emerging Churches - New Zealand

Future Church NZ
Spiritual communities in NZ

Emerging Churches - United Kingdom

Church In a Spiritual Age
Churches Together in England

Group for Evangelism
Churches Together in England

Moot
UK community

Sites Unseen
LOTS of alternative Christian Links

Emerging Churches - United States

Open Source Theology
Collaborative theology site

Scum Of The Earth
Denver, Colorado

The Underground Railroad
Goths, punks and metal heads for Christ

Emerging Church Articles

Ryan Bolger has drawn attention to a number of articles on Emerging Churches within Denominational Structures.

Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger wrote The Morphing of the Church;
Walt Kallestad, Lutheran pastor, Community Church of Joy, wrote Redefining Success, Moving from Entertainment to Worship;
Ryan Bell, pastor, Hollywood Seventh Day Adventist, wrote From the Margins: Engaging Missional LIfe in the Seventh-Day-Adventist Church;
Nadia Bolz-Weber, mission developer of a Lutheran church plant in Denver, “House for all Sinners and Saints”, wrote Confessions of a Sarcastic Lutheran;
Troy Bronsink, PCUSA pastor and community organizer in inner-city Atlanta, wrote Of Dying Breeds and Swelling Hopes: A Mainline Emergent in the Reformed Tradition;
Eugene Cho, pastor of Quest, Seattle, wrote Quest and Its Relationship with the Evangelical Covenant Church;
Phil Jackson, pastor of The House in Chicago, wrote A Reciprocal Connection: The Surprising Convergence of Hip-Hop and the ECC;
David Fitch, pastor of “Life on the Vine”, in outlying Chicago, wrote On Being an Emerging Christian in the Christian and Missionary Alliance;
Liz Rios, founder for Center for Emerging Female Leaership, and Luis Alvarez, pastor in the AG, wrote Will a New Church Emerge? Las Raices in the Assemblies of God.

How many of you fall into this category?